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4a5: Anomie and Prison Riots – Durkheim
Now, Durkheim’s theory of anomie suggests that change is a key variable, and if you take
Durkheim’s theory and you and apply it to prison riots, then what you’re going to be looking for
is sudden changes. And to parallel his theory of suicide, one of the things you might look for,
with respect to inmate aspirations, are changes that take place within a prison that could inflate
inmates’ aspirations, and make them desire or expect certain things, certain goals, that are
unattainable. In other words, if they were, say, suddenly promised something, and the
administration then failed to deliver, inmates would get up their expectations, they would have
these aspirations, but yet, they would be unfulfilled. And that would create, maybe, some anger
and frustration, and could lead to a prison riot. Now, what this would mean, if this is possible, or
if it’s true, is that this kind of situation of anomie would explain prison riots as emotional or
expressive events – things that occur because of anger and, perhaps, a desire for revenge.
Now this sort of thing doesn’t happen often in prison, because prison administrators are very
careful not to promise inmates things that they can’t deliver – in fact, I’ve only found one
instance where that became a problem. Many years back, the Canadian federal government
was about to institute conjugal visits, and this is when a spouse can come and visit an inmate
on the grounds, and they can live there over the weekend, or four or five days, something of that
nature. And it is meant as a rehabilitative; it’s meant to maintain family bonds, so that when
inmates get out, they have a spouse to go to, and a family to go to. The belief is, with these
bonds, that they’ve got more to lose, and they’re less likely to go out and commit crime. So,
conjugal visits are considered to be quite rehabilitative, and they’re common – they’re quite
common throughout the world, Canada was very late in implementing conjugal visits. And when
the federal government decided to do so, the inmates were quite keen on this, and, in fact, they
put a lot of their money together, and, down in the Kingston area, in any case, they bought
these trailers, paid for with inmate money, that were put on the grounds of the penitentiaries –
mostly maximum – so that these trailer visits would be conjugal visits – there was a facility for it.
Now, before, in fact, the policy was implemented, the government came out with the rules, and
the rules were quite restrictive: that inmates had to be lawfully married before they could have
these trailer visits, these conjugal visits. And, of course, most inmates are not, or at least they’re
not with their spouse. Many of them do, however, have conjugal relationships, and conjugal
spouses, common-law spouses, but they were going to be excluded. So there was a lot of anger
– their aspirations were crushed; they thought they were going to be able to make use of these
trailers, and they had high hopes to do so, and they had contributed their money to purchase
these trailers, and so, it was a situation of anomie. It was a very explosive situation, and it
meant that there was the possibility of a riot. And, in fact, the government, because of the
advice of the prison administration, backed down, and they loosened up the rules to allow
inmates to have these conjugal visits with their common-law spouses, and all of the tension
receded. But, if a riot had occurred, this would have been a situation of anomie, in Merton’s
sense of the word, when aspirations grew, and as a result of them being unfulfilled, there was a
great deal of tension and anger. So, the riot would have been an instance of revenge, perhaps,
if the inmates felt victimized, they were angry, it was a type of hitting back – in other words, it
would have been an expressive event.
Now, it never occurred. However, it’s quite common for the opposite situation to occur. In other
words, inmates have certain privileges, they’re quite used to these things, and because of the
behaviour of the few, the administration will frequently clamp down and remove some of these
privileges from all of them. This is another situation where anomie can occur. And in this kind of
situation, inmates get used to having certain privileges. Now, the administration sees them as
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privileges, but after a while, inmates start to see them as rights, and these are things that they
feel they have a legitimate right to, and they get particularly annoyed and angered if they get
taken away just because of the behaviour of the few. All of them are being punished, but they
don’t feel that’s fair, because they haven’t done anything wrong, now they’re losing these rights,
and so, they feel victimized. They feel angry, they’re upset, their aspirations are crushed, and
this anger could lead to a prison riot. And a prison riot, in this instance, would be an expressive
act, an explosion of anger, a desire for revenge based on a sense of victimization. And it would
explain the violent nature of a prison riot as well, too. So, the prison riot would be an angry
response, motivated by a desire to gain revenge. It’s an expressive mechanism, and that
releases the frustrations and the anger of inmates, because of the fact that things that they’re
used to having have been taken away from them.
And these small privileges have a great deal of significance in a prison because of the fact that
they have so little to live for while they’re locked up in there. And so, small privileges can take
on a monumental significance, and taking them away can lead to, perhaps, a violent outburst,
which could be a prison riot. Now, this sort of thing happened throughout the ‘60s and the ‘70s.
There was a cyclical pattern in prison, because the authorities were introducing all kinds of
reforms in prison, and this often led to loss of privileges and freedom of movement within the
prison, and what tended to happen is inmates would take advantage of this, get involved in
deviant activity, such as drugs, sex, violent acts, murder, and the administration would respond
by clamping down, and taking some of these privileges away. And then, time would go by,
they’d give them more privileges, and then there would be more problems, and then they would
take them away as well. So this cyclical pattern was occurring for quite a long time, and riots
were occurring along with them. And these riots were happening at a time of change, often at a
time when things had been improved in the prison, followed by some restrictions. And so this
cyclical pattern was really a cyclical occurrence of anomie, where inmates were losing their
privileges, or having them taken away. So this theory helps to explain why this kind of change in
a prison is so dangerous, especially if it affects inmates’ privileges. Anything that threatens their
privileges, or leads them to expect things that are not forthcoming, can be quite dangerous, and
can lead to a prison riot.
The theory can also explain the association between prison riots and overcrowding. When a
prison starts to get overcrowded, it inadvertently creates a situation of anomie, because the kind
of privileges that inmates had before start to be curtailed. So, you may have had your own cell,
but now they have double-bunking, so you have to share your cell – or maybe even triple or
quadruple bunking – so, you lost that privilege. You used to be able to go to the gym three or
four times a week, now you can only go once. There may have been a two-week period before
you could get into a school program, but now it’s two months, or six months, or things like that.
You used to be locked up in your cell, maybe a couple of hours a day – now, it may be five or
six hours a day. Overcrowding places a great deal of demands on the staff in a prison, and on
the physical plan and facilities, and it means that inmates find that the kinds of programs and
services available to them have diminished – there’s longer waits for them, and there’s more
lockdown time. And they start to get angry, because it’s the kinds of things that they’ve grown
used to, its been taken away from them – they feel this sense of victimization, they think of it as
an injustice, they’re angry, and they may just hit back. And, if they hit back, a prison riot could
be the result of that.
Now, just to finish up the discussion of prison riots, I’m going to go back to the Kingston
Penitentiary riot, and try to use this theory to explain why the Kingston riot occurred. What
happened at Kingston is that inmates were about to be moved to Millhaven, and this was quite
disconcerting. There was a lot of concern at Kingston Penitentiary about the move to Millhaven
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– a lot of rumours. Inmates were very upset, quite angry. What they anticipated at Millhaven
was an institution that was going to be a super-secure institution that was going to be controlled
remotely by guards in plastic booths, there was going to be video cameras everywhere – they
really expected a diminishment of the privileges that they had at Kingston. So, they thought the
conditions at Millhaven were going to be a lot more oppressive, and they were not looking
forward to going there – in fact, there was a lot of anger about going there. And then, the riot
occurred. And guards reported on this as well, too, that the inmates were very upset about the
move to Millhaven. And this was going to be a significant change, and it was a change that was
going to create this situation of anomie, in Durkheim’s sense. In other words, it was a situation
in which they had become accustomed to certain privileges, and they anticipated that they were
going to lose these privileges, that they were going to be in a far more restrictive environment
once they got moved to Millhaven. So, if that’s the reason they rioted, then they rioted because
of this kind of situation in which their aspirations were about to be crushed – they were about to
lose the privileges that they had enjoyed, and they were angry. So, this would have been a
hitting-back reaction, an angry reaction – explaining the violence in the Kingston riot – it would
have been a prison riot that was largely expressively motivated, motivated out of emotion, and a
desire for revenge.
This is the end of our lecture series on prison riots. The next topic is going to deal with robbery
and bank robbery.
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